


Bonus Round

by Daisiestdaisy (Doyle)



Category: Gotham (TV)
Genre: Fluff, Future Fic, M/M, Secret Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-04
Updated: 2017-03-04
Packaged: 2018-09-28 08:14:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10081034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Doyle/pseuds/Daisiestdaisy
Summary: The Penguin deals with an intruder at the Iceberg Lounge.





	

**Author's Note:**

> The Riddler's question-mark puzzles are from the Arkham video game series, but no knowledge of that canon's needed.
> 
> [This gorgeous fanart](http://nygmobblepot-fanart.tumblr.com/post/156915997051/nygmobblepot1001kisses-6-hand-kissing-1-2-3) sparked the idea for this fic.

The crowd tonight was raucous, even for the Iceberg Lounge. Two bachelorette parties and a mob retirement, all of them spilling out of their reserved areas and mingling with one another, plus a crowd of fraternity idiots from Gotham U with fake IDs so sub-par he’d taken pity and had the girls point them to the print studio out back where they could upgrade, for an almost reasonable price. Tips were up, the gaming tables were at capacity, and nobody had been shot all night.

All of it had Oswald in an excellent mood, and it was a shame that the call from security had to dampen it.

“He’s what? Wait, I can’t hear you.” Oswald moved into his office and closed the door, the sound-proofing cutting out the din from the club floor. “That’s better. It sounded like you were saying you couldn’t handle one single unarmed intruder, which I know has to be a silly misunderstanding on my part since you’re a supposed professional, and one who is paid _very_ generously to protect my club.”

“Nah, you heard me right.”

He’d brought this on himself. He hired security staff for their muscle, not their ability with nuance and sarcasm. “Just toss him over the side. Do I have to think of everything around here?”

His security chief – Oswald didn’t trouble himself learning their names until they’d lasted three months, and he tended to just think of him as Butch Two – spoke slowly, as if he was choosing his words with unusual thought. “I’d be real happy to do that, boss. That’d make my night, this guy’s a real – _shut your mouth, you, you don’t want my boss to come up here_. But it’d mean breaking one of your standing orders, so if you wanna just give me a green light on that I can go ahead and...”

“Why didn’t you just say it was him?” Oswald snapped, already grabbing his coat from the stand by his desk and ignoring the protest on the other end of the line that he’d said that first and maybe Oswald just hadn’t heard him. “Do nothing, do you hear me? I'll handle this myself. My standing orders...” He thought for a good five seconds on a better way to say that but had to settle for an irked “...stand. Keep him there. I’m on my way up.”

**

Oswald, being a legitimate businessman and pillar of Gotham’s society, didn’t make a habit of skulking around on rooftops like some common costumed criminal. He had worked hard to build and rebuild his empire, and he paid other people to take on any parts of the job that required traipsing on buildings in the cold and dark, with the constant threat of falls or Bat-attacks.

So he hadn’t used the Lounge’s roof exit in years, but nonetheless, he was sure he would have remembered the curved structure opposite the door, a free-standing monstrosity of glass and metal taller than he was.

Oswald stared up at it. He didn’t yell. Yelling might have attracted undue attention to the club from any nosy vigilantes who happened to be passing, although that ship might have already sailed given the _giant question mark on his roof._

Butch Two came into sight from the other side of the sculpture – so it was big enough for a large and unstealthy man to conceal himself behind, perfect – dragging its obvious architect by one meaty hand wrapped around his upper arm.

“Riddler,” Oswald said, a quick once-over enough to know that his orders had been obeyed; the bowler hat was askew and his cane wasn’t in his hands, but he hadn’t been hurt. “What is the meaning of this? We have an agreement.”

“I don’t set foot in the Iceberg Lounge and your men leave me alone,” he quickly concurred. “I’m not in the Lounge, just on it. Apologies if that isn't sticking strictly to the letter of the law, Penguin, but your attack dog threatened to throw me off the building, so call it square...?”

Butch Two growled, which, if it was in response to being called an attack dog wasn’t helping his case, and he looked even unhappier when Oswald told him, “They need you downstairs. A group of college boys just challenged half the Whisper Gang to something called beer pong and I imagine it’s going to turn ugly.”

“I could take care of this real quick first,” he said. The Riddler squirmed in his grasp.

“Let him go,” Oswald sighed. That look of scowling concentration meant he was thinking up an insult in the form of a riddle, and Oswald had no intentions of staying on this drafty roof for the three hundred years it would take for Butch Two to get it. He forced a smile for his employee. “You did the right thing in calling me. Good job. Go use those talents to take care of our esteemed customers, please.”

Butch Two seemed to inflate with pride at the compliment, and he finally, slowly, released his grip on his prisoner. “You want I should leave you my gun, boss?”

“I’m fine.” He braced his weight on his good leg long enough to lift his cane, the curved silver beak of the handle glinting in the city lights, to make the point that he was already armed. “And the Riddler’s not going to be any trouble. Are you, Mr. Nygma? We’re just going to have a little talk about truce conditions and what happens when we renege on them.”

“Fine by me. Run along, now,” the Riddler added, breaking into that Cheshire-cat grin that nobody had wiped off his face in all these years. Butch Two looked as though he would love to be the one to do it, but Oswald just raised his eyebrows at him and he sloped off to the fire exit instead, with one last longing look towards the walled edge and the five-floor drop to the sidewalk.

Oswald watched until the door was closed, and then he gave it another half-minute to be sure they were alone before he turned around again. The smug smile had dropped away, and that was all it took: without moving, without taking off his mask or that ridiculous hat, the Riddler had shifted back into Ed. Something about his eyes, Oswald had always thought.

“Ed,” he began, gesturing up at the question mark, and if they’d been somewhere he could be sure was private – his penthouse below their feet, say, or Ed’s apartment across town whose rent was carefully buried in the Lounge’s monthly accounts, both of them regularly swept for bugs and protected by security systems Ed had designed himself – he would have appended a frustrated, sarcastic _‘Darling. Light of my life.’_

“First of all,” Ed said, holding up one finger – oh, good, this was going to be a multi-staged explanation – “you were right, the new one looks exactly like Butch. Wow. Are we sure it’s not a long-lost son?”

“You should look into it,” Oswald suggested. “Maybe that can be your new project instead of, oh, just for an example, constructing a giant Bat-luring target on the roof of my nightclub.”

“It’s actually a puzzle. Those wires connect to that pressure plate, which activates the light inside the structure, causing it to...”

“This thing _lights up_?” Green, no doubt. It’d be visible halfway across the city. Oswald could feel a headache gathering behind his eyes. He closed them, took a moment to breathe. “And you decided that of all the rooftops, on all the buildings, in all of Gotham, you had to put it on mine.”

“The real thing will be on a lot more buildings. Not much of a puzzle otherwise. The Lounge is in the ideal place to test for visibility and the weather conditions tonight are perfect and I’m _far_ less likely to be shot on your territory than anyone else’s, so I brought along my prototype.”

He was wringing his gloved hands together, almost dancing in place with excitement at his own brilliance, and Oswald usually lived to see him in this mood because he adored Ed’s glee for his work, but not when it conflicted with his own. And not when it put Ed in danger. That wasn’t the deal.

“You didn’t ask me,” he said. “You didn’t say a word. Even though I asked you last week what all those blueprints in your apartment were. ‘Nothing important’. Surely, if you’d really tried, you could have dumbed it down enough for me.”

Ed stilled, his excitement fading as it finally sunk in that Oswald was upset. “Oswald, no, it’s not a question of... those were just preliminary sketches, I had no idea I’d finish the prototype so soon. And I can’t call you at work, and the forecast’s predicting rain tomorrow…”

“Well, good to know that if my men had been a little more trigger-happy, at least the weather would have been appropriate for your funeral.”

Ed twitched, and Oswald saw, and some part of him that wasn’t busy being furious appreciated, the couple of seconds where he tried hard not to say what he was thinking before it won out: “I know you're being hyperbolic for effect, but even if your goon had killed me, a day is hardly enough time to stage an accident, call the GCPD, wait for them to release the body, call a funeral home...”

“Not the point, Ed!”

“I mean, the paperwork alone…”

“Gah!” Oswald turned his back on him, stalking to the edge of the roof to glare out at the city. It was overcast, the black shape of a bat outlined in ghostly yellow on the clouds, and it was a small comfort to know that somewhere Jim Gordon was having a bad night of his own.

If the Batman had any decency he’d come right now, drawn by this damn puzzle of Ed’s, and just take them both away to Arkham. Separate blocks, for preference.

“Oswald?”

He didn't answer, or turn, or react to the touch on his shoulder that lingered and turned into a long back-and-forth sweep across his back, as if he was a nervy cat that could be calmed down by petting, a gesture all the more annoying for being very pleasant.

“I overheard some chatter on the police scanner about something big going on in Amusement Mile,” Ed said by his ear. “Whatever Quinn's up to over there, I counted on it keeping the Bat occupied the rest of the night. This was just a dry run. Proof of concept. You know that I'd never draw him to the Iceberg Lounge.”

“I'm not worried about the damn club, Ed.”

“I know.”

Of course he did. Once, a very long time ago, he had tricked Oswald into choosing Ed’s safety over his own life, and that was a bell you could never unring. They both knew the Lounge was the second most important thing in Oswald's life, and that he'd burn it to the ground in an instant to protect the _first_ most important thing.

Ed said, “I suppose I thought it was one of those ‘better to plead forgiveness than ask permission’ situations.”

Meaning he’d known Oswald would have said no. Men. You forgave one vengeance-fuelled murder attempt fifteen years ago and they thought they could just get away with anything for the rest of your lives.

“I haven't noticed much pleading for my forgiveness so far,” Oswald said, but he couldn’t put the force behind it that he wanted. Turning around to face Ed as he said it had been a tactical mistake. Ed was giving him his full attention, as much contrition on his face as he ever managed to muster.

“I was caught up in my scheme and I didn't think it through.” Ed reached for his hands, lifting them together and leaning forward to brush a kiss across the knuckles. “I'm sorry.”

“ _Ed_ ward,” he protested, flushing, but unable to make himself actually pull away. This barely counted as a public display, he told himself. No-one was in sight, and it was two in the morning, and if the Bat did happen to be passing, let him wonder. “I still want this eyesore off of my building.”

“It’ll be gone within the hour.”

“And you’re talking me through those plans for your puzzle.” Ed started to say something, and Oswald tightened his grip on his hands. “This is non-negotiable, Ed. I’d never interfere with your work, but I can steer you away from trouble-spots and contested territory.”

“Acceptable. Up-to-date intel can only help. I doubt anyone else’s mooks are as easily muzzled as Butch Junior. I am going to look into his parentage, by the way.”

“Did you kill Butch or did I?” Oswald tried to remember, then waved away the thought. “Not important.”

Ed brightened. “And since you’re helping me with my work, I had a few suggestions about improving the Lounge.”

“Ed,” Oswald said, feeling secure enough in their privacy to reach up and stroke his beloved’s face. “My darling. My only. If the next words out of your mouth are ‘trivia night’, I will throw you off this roof myself.”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm at vampirebillionaire.tumblr.com if anybody wants to chat about these two!


End file.
